Tuesday, July 31, 2012

How much do you need to know to be prepared for emergencies? You only need to know enough to get through whatever happens in an emergency.

You can be the best preparedness expert in the world and something could happen to you that you are not ready for. Nothing is perfect and that includes preparedness. We all have to make do with doing the best we can.

You best tool for preparedness is your mind and your determination to do what is necessary to make it through an emergency. Once you have that, you will be amazed at what you can improvise when it is necessary.

I expect we all have our bucket list of things we would like to learn during our lifetimes. If most of your list is preparedness knowledge, then you may be in a situation to use some advice I have to give myself a lot: "The way to be happy with what I have is to get more or want less."

Knowledge is one of my biggest bottomless wants. That is why the internet has a special siren song for me. It is full of such good information that I can get lost in it and forget to come up for air. I believe that one can learn almost anything from the internet now. It is necessary to remember that one can't learn it all at once or even in one lifetime. We have to make choices and prioritize.

In an earlier post I wrote about using Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to make decisions. A diagram of it was included so that you can print it out if necessary. Please leave the copyright information on it if you do, however. I made the chart myself so we would not infringe on anybody else's work.

Using Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is a great way to work on your preparedness. Start at the bottom and work your way up. I like to have a long list of preparedness wants. This is because you never know what will show up in a thrift store, garage sale or even on the curb for garbage pickup. I have gotten wonderful storage containers for free from Freecycle.

The local hardware store had a great sale on 5 gallon buckets before I was quite ready to fill them. I got them anyway. I'd rather have the containers before the food to put in them, so that was really better than my plan.

You don't have to have food grade buckets if you use mylar bags to store the food in them, but I think it is a lot safer. The buckets from the hardware store are number 2 hdpe, which is food grade. I don't mind that they have the logo of the hardware store all over them.

Don't be discouraged at immensity of the task before you, if you are just starting out. You only need to be prepared for the emergency that you will face. You never know exactly what that will be.

I knew someone who had taken his first self defense class and learned one defensive move. He was attacked in a parking garage on the way home from the class. He used his one defensive move and it worked! He knew enough for the emergency that he faced.

Just get started on your preparedness. Whatever you have may be exactly what you need for the emergency that you will face.

Monday, July 30, 2012

Alternative health care, like diatomaceous earth, can be confusing at times. One reason for this is because when you first start taking care of a problem you can get very sick, suddenly.

This is because your body is so ill that the thing that it needs makes it have a bad reaction. I thought this was called a healing effect, but I can't seem to find it under that name.

Some people I know got very bad diarrhea from using diatomaceous earth at first. I believe this was because their bodies needed diatomaceous earth or something in it very badly. I am not an expert on either diatomaceous earth or alternative healing. Every person is different and the most important part of using alternative medicine is to pay attention to what is going on inside your body.

Diatomaceous earth may cause severe constipation for me and others I know, and my animals. Since I became vegetarian, this is not much of a problem for me. When I give diatomaceous earth to my cats, I always make sure they have lots of oat grass to eat. This prevents constipation for them. I watch their litter box and if I think there is any tendency for them to be constipated, I dose them with petromalt as well.

Someone was searching for how to dose cats with diatomaceous earth. I put it into food. I like to use butter because it is easy to get into their mouths. You can even push it between their teeth.

I always take a treat and let my cats see me put it nearby to give to them immediately afterwards.They are so interested in the treat that they don't pay as much attention to the diatomaceous earth being shoved into their mouths.

I have a huge repertoire of tricks that I use to give my cats medicine and do other treatments to them. This blog is not for that kind of information.

I want people to include their pets in their preparedness, and the basics are okay here. I will probably do a cat care blog and maybe include some helpful things I know about other animals, especially dogs. Right now I need to keep helping people be prepared for disasters.

As you know, if you read my blog much, I believe that people need to be prepared for bigger, more frequent and more widespread natural disasters. These are in addition to nuclear war disasters, and other kinds of man made disasters.

I hope that you and your loved ones will work on disaster preparedness, so that you will have a better chance to survive.

Sunday, July 29, 2012

Most economists, and along with them, most of our politicians, do an interesting magic act with natural resources. When natural resources are used or sold, they count. When the natural resources are used up, nothing happens to show that the value of those resources are gone. This magic act mostly includes the damage to the environment during the process of removing the natural resources.

Some resources, like gas and oil are effectively gone forever, once they are taken out of the land and used up. Other natural resources like trees in a forest, are not gone, but are not always replaced at all or with equal value.

One type of replacement for trees in a forest that has been cut down is to replace the forest with nothing but pine trees, for example. If you look at a natural forest, it will not be made up of only one type of tree. It will be a mixture of different kinds of trees and other plants as well.

Someone asked me once why it made any difference what kinds of trees were in a forest. My answer is not thorough, but it is easy to understand. I said, "Suppose you are an animal that is able to eat trees and pine trees are like celery. How do you think you would do if you had nothing but celery to eat?"

Plants have helpful interactions as well as animals. Some kinds of flowers will only grow under trees, others will only grow away from trees, for example.

An all pine tree forest is not a replacement for a real forest. It does not have equal value to the forest that used to be there.

Those are only a small sample of how the people are being cheated. Resources are going into the profit side of their national economy and nothing is going into the loss side of the national economy. Something is gone with the resources, and it is important to the people who lose it.

We need for our politicians to switch to economics that place value on our natural resources. We must know what is really going on. We do not need cheap magic tricks with numbers to confuse us.

The kind of economics that takes the value of natural resources into account before they are used up is called, "Natural Resource Economics."

Here is a quote from the Berkeley University Site about a course at their college:"The Environmental Economics & Policy ....takes a problem-solving
approach to issues involving renewable and fixed natural resources, and
it is based on a foundation in micro-economic theory and the economics
of resources and the environment."

We the people, have a right to know what is going on with our lands and our natural resources.

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Some Americans have a saying, "Put your money where your mouth is." Sometimes they also say, "Put up or shut up." Both have to do with gambling originally, but have come to mean something about life.

The current idea as it relates to life is, "Don't give me empty words. Show what you are saying in your actions or your behavior."

Most people do not have a good match between their ideas and what they say is right, and what they do.

I know that I have this problem in my own life. Lately I have been trying to fix it. I wish for my entire way of life to reflect what I think and believe.

I don't feel the urge to renounce the world and hie me to a nunnery or don a yellow robe and take up a begging bowl, at this point, however.

India and China are joining the ranks of Westerners already enjoying an affluence unprecedented in human history. More people have a higher standard of living than ever before.

More people are living wastefully as well. An artist is making beautiful photographs of some of this waste that we do. An article about his work mentioned how much is wasted on a regular basis, and how much it costs.

I am very good at stretching my money, but even so, I am guilty of waste. I have been trying to change this.

Stopping waste is good for many reasons. Some of the reasons are really important ones. If we waste food, for example, it is not simply a piece of celery that we waste. It is also the fuel it took to water it, pick it and ship it.

We are too close to WWIII over fuel. It is easy to feel helpless over this and give up trying to do anything. Most of us feel pretty insignificant. How can it matter what one insignificant person does?

Millions of insignificant people all acting together on anything can change the entire world. Perhaps it is time we made ourselves significant.

We don't want to end our lives in a nuclear holocaust. Our lives can reflect that. One easy way for that to happen is to stop our waste. We can all put our money where our mouths are.

Friday, July 27, 2012

The northern part of the East Coast of the USA is going to get a sea level rise of up to 48 inches higher than the rest of the world. Maybe. It depends.

Greenland just mystified scientists by suddenly and rapidly melting 95% of its ice. Normally only 40% of Greenland's Ice is melting so fast. If Greenland keeps on doing this it will change an ocean current that flows by the northeast coast of the USA. This current makes the oceans in that area lower than the rest of the world.

Yes, I wondered how that works out too. The oceans of the earth are not level like a bathtub. Some areas are lower or higher than others. Part of the difference is caused by temperature differences of the water in different areas and different depths. My take on how this works is that if enough cold water is flowing by an area and is deep under the ocean, it compacts the water and makes it take up less room.

The northeast coast of the USA currently has a lower than average sea level because a cold current compacts the water there. If Greenland keeps melting as fast as it is in July 2012 - no more current packing down the water along the northeast coast of the USA. That equals a fast rise in sea level. It may be as much as 48 inches more than the rest of the world.

I had visions of the statue of liberty with it's torch barely clearing the ocean, but apparently it won't be that bad, right away anyway.

There are some maps on the internet that are supposed to help you understand what the rise in sea level will look like. Some of them show different amounts of sea level rise. Some will let you check the rise for a particular area. I will give you links so you can play with it and get an idea of what might happen.

Simply not having the whole east coast of the USA inundated by the ocean doesn't let everybody off the hook, however. Storm surges will go a lot higher when the sea level is higher. That does not even take into account that storms are getting bigger due to climate change.

People who live on the northeast coast of the USA have more reason than ever to cut down their lifestyles, including fuel/energy use. Humans are making climate change worse. We are going to have very serious consequences because of using so much fuel/energy. We must change what we are doing if we want to keep our lifestyles, perhaps even our lives.

No. You are not off the hook if you do not live on the northeast coast of the USA. It is unlikely that you will be completely unscathed by direct effects of climate change. Even if you are unscathed by direct effects, the indirect ones will still get you.

A lot of things that people use all over the world are made on the northeast USA coast. Guess what happens to prices of those things if that area has to pay for a lot of storm damage?

No matter where you are, you will pay for climate change one way or another. You may as well face it. You have to change your life so that you are not making climate change speed up. You need to care about climate change as if your life depends on it. That is serious disaster prevention.

In the course of doing research for this post I discovered that the Antarctic has an even more unpleasant surprise in store for us. I just do not feel like posting on it. I need to recoup a little to tackle that. I will work on that as soon as possible.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

As I have mentioned before, diatomaceous earth is not poison. It kills insects by tiny microscopic sharp edges that puncture holes in the insects and cause them to dry up and die.

When this works, you will probably never be aware of the presence of any insects. Insects are an inevitable part of your diet already. They have industrial and health standards that state the maximum amount of insects allowed in food. Don't think about it too much.

You do not need to have very much diatomaceous earth in your stored food to protect it. Here is a recommendation for how much diatomaceous earth to use in stored grains:"GRAIN STORAGE & PROTECTION:Codex food grade diatomaceous earth is a healthy non-toxic alternative to chemical contamination of stored grain. When the grain is to be used, food grade diatomaceous earth can be easily removed, but need not be. Since it is “food grade”, makes no difference in taste or cooking quality, and adds 15 traceminerals. Suggested grain storage use: 1 cup of DE will protect 50 #'s of grain -- 5 cups of food grade diatomaceous earth will protect 300 #'s of grain -- 7 lbs. of DE will protect 1500 #’s of grain or seeds. One source advises only 1 to 2 #'s of DE per ton of grain.

A study done by ACRES, USA, Inc. advised that after 12 months of storage, the food grade diatomaceous earth treated material had 15 insects, compared to 4884 for malathion and 16,994 for untreated grain."

If you have the equipment etc. to treat more than 50 pounds of grain at once, go for it. Most of us won't have occasion to use more than a cup of diatomaceous earth at a time. You need to stir it well and you should not breathe the diatomaceous earth.

Some sources say that it can be a future (20+ years), problem for causing lung cancer because it is so small that it will float in the air and go deep in your lungs. Other sources say it is no problem. I use a white filter mask from the hardware store.

Diatomaceous earth can be used inside walls and other areas accessible to pests. When I had a very bad problem with cockroaches a long time ago in another state, I put diatomaceous earth inside my light switch boxes and electric plugs. You can bait it with powdered sugar to get them to eat it and have more contact with it. I used mostly diatomaceous earth and only a small amount of sugar.

I also put it in my plumbing pipe holes and the areas around them. My windows and doors and my attic door were also treated with the mixture. My neighbors did not seem too concerned with having roaches and I didn't want their roaches moving in with me.

One source on diatomaceous earth said the grain you mix it with must be done so that each grain is coated with the DE. They suggested that one mix small batches to coat the grain thoroughly and evenly.

Another source said that DE is not as effective as , freezing, heating, an elimination of oxygen through mylar bags with the oxygen removed and oxygen absorbers added. I plan to use DE as well as mylar bags, oxygen removal and oxygen absorbers added.

I have eaten chocolate covered insects on purpose, but somehow, having an insect doing the back stroke in my breakfast cereal doesn't appeal to me.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

I have already posted a little about diatomaceous earth. This post is going to be about how to use diatomaceous earth to protect your food. I will fit in a little about other ways to protect your food as well.

I like to use hardware cloth to keep out rodents. It is a lot tougher than wire screens, so they can't get through it as easily.

If you are making raised garden beds, you need to put hardware cloth on the bottom, before you add extra soil or even think about plants.

If you absolutely cannot afford hardware cloth you can put pieces of broken glass down deep so the rodents will cut themselves. I hate this method and it make become a risk to you and others later.

Your root cellar really needs to be protected against rodents. Even if everything is safe in glass jars and cans, rodents can contaminate and carry disease with droppings. If you have barrels of apples and potatoes, etc., those can become a rodent haven.

Pick hardware cloth to line your root cellar with that is smaller than you think you will ever need. You do not want a surprise to find they can get through smaller holes than you thought. We can also expect new species of rodents to invade new territories. You could get smaller rodents than you were used to.

You need to be fanatical to make sure there are NO GAPS in your hardware cloth. Cover vents as well, even small pipes and areas around the pipes and vents.

Put diatomaceous earth into food that could be infested by insects. If you are not aware of this, I have to inform you that there are already insect eggs in most of your food. This includes everything from dry pet food and grains, to prepared foods that are ready to put into your toaster.

Once any insects hatch from eggs in your food, they will die as soon as they eat any food with diatomaceous earth in it. This post is getting too long so I will continue it.

Since disease microorganisms are also increasing, we have even more reason than we used to, to avoid contact with disease vectors like rodents and insects.

I don't want to get into much in this post about increased disease. I have already posted on it a lot. I mentioned epidemics in previous posts on the subject.

I want to talk about preventing epidemics by keeping down rodent and insect invasions that can carry harmful diseases to humans. I think keeping these vectors out of your homes is the safest way to avoid disease.

I want to start with posting about keeping bugs and rodents out of your food first. Then I want to post about making your home inhospitable to them. I also want to post about safe things you can do to keep insects from biting you and things you can do if you have to deal with pests in your home.

Poison is way down on my list of choices for dealing with pests, so you won't find much on that subject here. I have been collecting information about non-poisonous methods for many years, however. If you like the last approach, read on. I'm going to do more posts about this information.

Monday, July 23, 2012

This contest is free, but you have to meet certain conditions to enter it:"Participants must be legal residents of the United States (excluding
Hawaii, Alaska, Florida, New York, Rhode Island and Puerto Rico,
where the Promotion is void), and at least 18 years of age or older by
February 20. 2012. Also, participants must have the following facilities
in order to be eligible:
1. A minimum of two (2) acres of fenced land
2. Access to a weather shelter
3. Access to a water source
Employees, officers, and directors (including immediate family
members and members of the same household) of Ogden Publications, Inc.,
their affiliated companies, subsidiaries, advertising and promotion
agencies, members of theAmerican Highland Cattle Association, and any
other entities and consultants directly associated with this Sweepstakes
(collectively, “Released Parties”), are also not eligible to
participate. All federal, state and local laws and regulations apply. Void where prohibited. "

The grand prize winner gets over $11,000. worth of prizes that would make most homesteaders drool.

The biggie among these is a highland cattle heifer.

I am busy eating my heart out because I am not eligible in several ways, not least of which is living in Alaska. Sigh. I guess they don't want to ship a nice cow up here. Spoil sports! We do have ferries.

You only get one entry before this coming December 17.

I met some Highland cattle in Scotland and thought they were very cute. I did not know how tough they are supposed to be. Some online sources say that they handle cold weather very well. They are supposed to be extra healthy, calve well without assistance and are not picky eaters. All of this seemed to make them possible good choices for Alaska.

The worst downside to them is probably not their fault. That would be grizzly bears. I somehow think a Highland cattle heifer could become a health food snack for a grizzly bear. I would not like that.

If you see homesteading as a preparedness solution, or you just like homesteading, you should take a look at the link to the contest. If you don't feel like typing it into your browser, you can just go to the Mother Earth site. I expect it will be easy to spot there.

Sunday, July 22, 2012

When I am making an extreme effort to cut down my food budget, I usually buy a large amount of rice. Rice is not always the cheapest food, but it is most of the time.

If rice is not the cheapest food in your area, you need to find out what is the cheapest. Then you need to find out how to cook it and try eating it. That way you will know whether you will be able to eat it a lot.

It is possible to eat nothing but rice for a while. There are people in the world who do this most of their lives. I don't think it is a good idea to eat nothing but rice if you can possibly avoid it, because of malnutrition.

You can make whatever else you have to eat besides rice, last longer by putting a small amount of it on a lot of rice. I had to do this for a long time once. It really inspired me to learn what edible plants grew in my area. The rice tasted a lot better with those edible plants on it.

If you are not making much, if any progress with your preparedness, switching to a mostly rice diet to save up a little bit of money may be necessary. Nothing at all except rice will cause malnutrition if you do it very long, so be careful. White rice is not very nutritious, so use brown rice. It may cost more, but it is worth it.

A lot of people have told me that mulberries are not edible. I would be dead if that was true. In order to make the best use of the plants available in your area for food, you will probably need to do some research. Some books even list mulberries as inedible, so you may need to check multiple sources.

I used to live under several mulberry trees. I ate them as long as the trees bore them. They are good on rice. They are not very sweet, but if you cook them on low heat until they get soft and the liquid from them starts to thicken they are sweeter. This works for most fruit.

After the fruit thickens, you can put it on rice for dessert. This can be done if you have no sweetener. After you do without sweetener for a while, you will be more easily satisfied with the sweetness from plain mulberries and other fruit. I think that your taste buds may become more sensitive.

Not everyone will want to do everything I have done to stretch the food money. You can pick what appeals to you and maybe you will think of things that I did not think of that you will like better.

Finding more different ways to cook the foods that I had available made eating more pleasant for me. I read a lot about cooking to find different ways to prepare the same ingredients. A different preparation method can make a big difference in the taste and texture and looks of the same food.

I sometimes invented ways to cook things that I had never found mentioned elsewhere. One of those was with rice. I would put it in a skillet, already cooked. I spread it out thinly on the bottom of the skillet and cooked it until it formed a crisp sheet. I liked it slightly burnt in places. That gave me something crunchy to eat. Sometimes I crumbled bits of the crisp rice on top of other food.

It would have worked to just eat plain rice with little bits of local plants on it, but I enjoyed it a lot more when I did something to make it different. I believe that enjoying your food is worth something.

Varying a diet even by different cooking methods makes it easier to keep eating something like rice when you don't have to. There were times when I was tempted to spend a little more money and buy more food to put on my rice.

It was easier to keep eating the rice when it tasted different. That meant that I was able to save up and buy more compact fluorescent light bulbs and reduce my electric bill.

Reducing my electric bill gave me more money to work with that I could use to buy a large amount of food on sale. That way I got to eat better and better as I saved more money.

I think it was worth it to eat rice for a while to be able to save more money later on. Sometimes you have to make short term sacrifices to make any progress over the long term.

If you look carefully at the way you spend money, you will find changes that you can make that will help you to save little bits of money that you can use to save even more. This way you can make your life better and have money to invest in emergency preparedness.

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Some of my posts talk about different kinds of disasters and how to prepare for them. There are a lot of similarities in the preparations that you need to make to survive different kinds of disasters. Volcanic ash fall will have a few differences from preparedness for a tornado, however.

You need to know what kinds of specific disasters are likely to happen where you are. We all need to prepare for disasters in general and we need to prepare for the specific disasters that happen in our area.

I already posted about most types of disasters in earlier posts. I provided links to agencies that cover specific disasters in great depth. They have everything you need to know about the kinds of disasters that your area gets most often.

I will do post links again to agencies that cover all the specific kinds of disasters like hurricanes and mudslides, and what you need to do to be prepared for them. I do not plan to write entire posts again about most specific kinds of disasters. I will see about making it easier for you to find my earlier posts, though.

I will do new posts about earthquakes. New information has been made available that changes what is considered best to help you survive an earthquake.

I hope you will study the sites that tell you more about what you need to do to prepare to survive the disasters in your area. Everyone needs to prepare for nuclear disasters, no matter where you live.

Here is a link to the Red Cross for basic family preparedness. You can see more information on the site.

If you look along the left side of this page you will see a list of links to pages about different kinds of disasters.

Find and study all of the kinds of disasters that are likely to happen in your area. Most of them probably have links to PDFs about how to prepare for that type of disaster. You might want to print out those PDFs or at least take notes.

Here is a link to a Red Cross page that tells you how to prepare for a chemical or radiation disaster. I think you need to know a lot more than this, but it is a place to start.

My earlier posts include a link to an entire book that you can download for free that tells you in great detail how to prepare for a nuclear disaster. There is also a link to a site that tells you how to make a "computer" out of paper, cardboard and plastic to calculate the effects of a nuclear blast. This blog has a post with a diagram I made of really basic stuff about what happens in a nuclear blast on this blog.

There are a whole lot of posts on this blog about nukes and nuclear disaster preparedness for you and your family. This is stuff you need to know. I hope you use it so that you can be safer.

Friday, July 20, 2012

This post is a continuation of a post about saving money for every day as well as for preparedness.

The next way to save money was laundry. I have already posted several times about doing laundry during and after a disaster. I will not repeat that information here, except to say that coin operated machines suck up a lot of your money.

If you wash your laundry yourself, especially by hand, and stop using dryers, it will save you a lot of money. Saving money on laundry is possible if you have your own washer and dryer at home as well. Dryers do take a lot of money to operate. You may want to use it as little as possible or not at all.

Stop going to corner grocery stores and use the big cheap places as much as you can. Buy your food in bulk. If you can't eat that much before it spoils, find someone to split larger amounts with.

Either don't use convenience foods or make your own. I have posts about doing that as well.

Saving money works best when you pick something that will add up over time. An example is the change to compact fluorescent bulbs. Every electric bill after switching to compact fluorescent bulbs was lower.

That gave me money to use to buy other things that would help me save even more money. An example was buying a big enough bowl to mix my own convenience foods in and a container to store the convenience mix in. I was able to buy those with electric bill savings.

Even if you and your family are not vegetarians, you can use some vegetarian food to save on your food bill. The first one I am talking about is called, "textured vegetable protein", or TVP for short. You can add it to meat dishes to make them go farther. If you get TVP by mail in bulk, it is much cheaper than meat.

It is a good idea to avoid serving an all meat dish that you plan to put TVP into very close to the time you serve the TVP. Your family, and you, are more likely to notice the difference that way. If you wait at least a week to put TVP into your chili, it will not be as noticeable. I chose spicy dishes to help hide the different taste of the TVP.

TVP comes in different flavors such as beef, chicken, pork or fish or sausage, etc. It also comes in different shapes and sizes. The most common form is small hard pieces that are about the size of cooked ground beef. You can find this size and type of TVP in a lot of health food stores, to try it out and see if you will like it.

Since TVP comes in so many flavors and shapes, you can easily substitute it for meat in many of your favorite recipes. TVP is also a convenience food since you only need to add boiling water and soak it for five minutes to have it ready to use.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

I keep getting search queries about whether you get constipation when you take diatomaceous earth. The short reply is, "Yes!" It can be quite bad. I therefore assume it will happen when I plan to take it myself or give it to my cats.

I eat extra fiber when I take diatomaceous earth. When I give it to my cats, I give them a dose of petromalt shortly afterwards. I watch the cats carefully on their elimination and if they have any signs of constipation at all they get more petromalt and I dose them daily for the next week.

My cats get to eat oat grass when they want to. I rotate containers in and out of my greenhouse for them, so they get much more fiber than most indoor cats do, so they do not often get constipated. If your cats don't get oat grass regularly, then you should probably just dose them daily with petromalt for the next week, as a matter of course after diatomaceous earth.

I am a vegetarian, so my diet is higher in fiber than the diet of most people. Diatomaceous earth does not bother me much because of that. If your diet is not very high in fiber, you will need to prepare for constipation after taking diatomaceous earth.

I dislike taking laxatives, and have not had any for many years because of my high fiber diet. You may need to take laxatives after a dose of diatomaceous earth. If you plan to take diatomaceous earth on a regular basis, I think it would be a good idea to consider increasing the fiber in your diet a lot.

People who eat meat are much more likely to get parasites and need diatomaceous earth than vegetarians. This is because when you eat a piece of meat, you are essentially sharing everything that animal ate during it's life. That includes parasites.

If I ate meat, I would certainly want to take diatomaceous earth every day. Taking diatomaceous earth is definitely an alternative health treatment. Regular, or allopathic doctors do not generally use diatomaceous earth much or even know much about it.

When you use alternative health methods, it can be very hard or impossible to find someone who is knowlegeable about them. If that is the case for you, it will be necessary for you to know what you are doing. If you choose to use alternative health methods for your preparedness, study and research is part of that preparedness.

Using alternative health methods for preparedness works much better if you start using them now. Alternative health methods work much better when you are using them regularly in your life and you get a feeling for what is normal in your own body and in others.

Allopathic doctors are much more oriented towards fixing problems after they really get going and they are serious. Alternative health is much more oriented towards prevention of health problems in the first place.

If you have noticed that you seem to become constipated after you took a dose of diatomaceous earth, you are doing something right. You knew what was normal for your elimination. You noticed that you had a problem with constipation that may have been connected with taking diatomaceous earth. You looked to find out if the dose of diatomaceous earth was causing the problem. You looked for a solution.

Now you need to start looking for potential problems and know about them ahead of time. If you are aware of those, you can be ready for them. You probably already have laxatives in your preparedness supplies. If you are using diatomaceous earth for your preparedness health care, you might want extra laxatives or you may want to adjust your preparedness diet. I think sprouts are the best solution there.

Sprouts seeds are small, light and don't require anything special equipment like refrigerators and freezers to keep them on the shelf. The volume of sprouted seeds compared to the volume of unsprouted ones in a container on your shelf is good. That will be a lot of food when the sprouts are ready to eat.

Sprouts are full of good nutrients and lots of fiber. That fiber can head off constipation problems, so you won't need laxatives, or at least as much, even if you take diatomaceous earth.

If I have any tendency towards constipation, I like to use prunes or bran. Since I don't like to take laxatives, that works for me. You will have to decide what works for you.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

When you decide to make your money go farther you have to think about where your money goes now and what is possible to change. You also have to think about what changes will make the most difference, in the shortest amount of time.

Some of the changes that I have picked to do first, show wildly varying income levels, so not all will apply to your situation, maybe none. You will have to take the idea and change it to fit your own situation.

One change that I chose was to stop buying from vending machines. I worked a night job, stores were closed and I never ate breakfast before work. That meant I got hungry and hit the vending machines. It wasn't a lot of money for one item, but I figured out the average cost and added it up for the month.

Those vending machines cost me more than dinner at a fine restaurant. I could have had several dinners at fine restaurants each month instead of vending machine junk.

I started eating breakfast, even it it was a breakfast bar or a glass of instant breakfast. That filled me up and helped me resist the vending machines. I did even better when I started to eat lunch. At first I went out to breakfast at a local restaurant that opened early. I had breakfast for lunch. It kept me away from the vending machines.

After that I started bringing my own lunch that I packed myself. That cost me much less than the restaurant and still kept me away from the vending machines.

The next example of saving money is light bulbs. I discovered that even though compact fluorescent bulbs cost much more than regular incandescent light bulbs, they save a lot of electricity.

My power bill dropped a lot when I had compact fluorescent bulbs all over my apartment. LEDs cost much less to run than even a compact fluorescent bulb does. I am still not buying a lot of LEDs. The one I am testing does not work well. They may need to make those better.

I used to have such a low income that electricity was one of the main areas that it was possible for me to save. I got drastic.

I bought a wind up radio that also had a light on it. It was a nice bright light and the wind up battery lasted me almost an hour on a full charge. I kept my lights off and just carried the wind up radio around with me at night. I rarely turned a light on in my apartment after I began using the wind up radio.

This post is growing too long, so I will continue the subject of saving money for every day and preparedness in other posts.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Some of the readers who have found their way to my blog have used search terms that show they do not know how to look up preparedness items, like food. This is one of the most important uses of your computer for preparedness. I already posted a while back on the subject of computers for preparedness. This time I am going to post about search engines for preparedness.

You do not need to know much about computers or even the internet to use a search engine to find preparedness food and other disaster supplies. You do need to be able to figure out words to put into your browser to get the items you are looking for to show up on your monitor screen.

You do not need complete sentences when you are looking for something on the internet. Complete sentences can actually be a hindrance in your search. A complete sentence can have the search engine looking up millions of appearances of the word "and", for example. This slows down the results and gives you a lot of useless information.

An example of what you don't want in your search is: "Where can I find disaster supplies?" Below is a screen shot of a search with that sentence. Notice that you got almost 5 1/2 million results. You probably don't want to spend the time to look at 5 1/2 million search engine results.

Worse yet, the top results page are probably going to be very expensive. If you need to stretch your emergency preparedness budget, buying cute little disaster kits all packed into an attractive box is not the way to go. That kit will not be tailored to your individual needs and will cost much more than you picking out what you want in your emergency supplies. This does not mean that you cannot use anything on the results page, however. It won't hurt to compare items and prices.

If you need to find water outside of your home, you can
use rainwater. Even though it is unlikely that an emergency would cut
off your food supply for two weeks, you should consider preparing a
supply that will last that long.

Notice that the search results are about half of what we got with the whole sentence. Also notice the appearance of the word "wholesale". That usually means "cheap" or "inexpensive". Don't be put off by the word "wholesale" because you think you have to buy too much at a time or you need a business license to buy it. The companies that sell wholesale will usually also sell to the general public or they can at least refer you to a distributor who can sell their stuff to you.

If you look at the paid advertising results, as well as the first page of regular search engine results, you will often see other search engine search terms besides the one you actually entered. You can write these down, and develop a list of alternate search engine terms to look up later.

Serious exploration of your first search engine results can give you a lot more than what is on the first page. Search engine results in the millions are common. You can keep moving to the next page of search engine results as long as the results are useful to you. I have found some of my best sources for supplies by continuing long past the first page of search engine results.

The companies that are on the first page of your search results are usually there because they paid the search engine for that spot. You may find later pages more useful than the first one.

Another way I find more search terms is through the use of a "thesaurus". A thesaurus is a book that helps you look up words that are the same as or similar to the one you look up in them.

There are good online versions of a thesaurus. the traditional version of the plural of thesaurus is,"thesauri", although thesauruses is not acceptable as well. You can do a search on the word, "thesaurus" and find the one you like the best. My personal choice is often a paperback book version of a thesaurus. That way I can be looking up more search terms in it while the computer is busy. This does not mean that you need to go out and buy a thesaurus in order to use a search engine well. I write a lot, so have a greater than normal need for a thesaurus.

I hope you are able to use search engines for finding good companies for preparedness supplies now. I am thinking about doing a post on how to do an advanced search on a search engine. I think it is worth the time it takes to learn. An advanced search can save you a lot of time when you use search engines.